photonics

University researchers estimated that ~25% of Americans suffer from some form of entomophobia, or a fear of insects. But amid the tendency for these creatures to frighten mammals, our six-legged frenemies do, in fact, play an important role in balancing the ecosystem. Pollination and pest control are among their essential jobs.

Pioneering next-generation technology, though, is not typically considered a demand that humankind places on insects.

Perhaps it is time to start.

Taking inspiration from a common backyard insect, researchers at Penn State made a breakthrough that might unlock the ability to create devices that provide a form of invisibility.


Courtesy of iStock.com/Heather Broccard-Bell.
Leafhoppers, the...

CEA-Leti researchers reported success in three related projects that are key steps to enabling a new generation of CMOS image sensors that can exploit all the image data to perceive a scene, understand the situation, and intervene in it — capabilities that require embedding AI in the sensor.

Demand for smart sensors is growing rapidly due to their high-performance imaging capabilities in smartphones, digital cameras, automobiles, and medical devices. This demand for improved image quality and functionality enhanced by embedded AI has presented manufacturers with the challenge of improving sensor performance without increasing the device size.

“Stacking multiple dies to create 3D architectures, such as three-layer...

The range of optical systems in which reflective optics appear is an appropriate indicator of the importance of these components. Mirrors are ubiquitous in the optical bench setups that enable laboratory research across disciplines. Industrial and health and life sciences applications, as well as large-scale optical systems used for astronomy and high-energy physics, also rely on reflective optics. Reflective optics’ ability to ensure that a system executes its desired function establishes their role as one of industry’s most used optics.


The gold-coated primary mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope comprises 18 individual mirrors. High-reflectivity coatings ensure that reflective optics achieve high levels of...

The visible range, spanning around 380 to 700 nm, has longstanding use in photonics. Many materials have specific absorption, reflection, and transmission characteristics in this band, which are exploited for applications from optical metrology and biomedicine to quantum and communications.

Increasingly stable and versatile visible lasers are populating the market, and the efficacy of these sources is intersecting with the emergence of chip-scale lasers — a burgeoning innovation area that is poised to benefit a range of disciplines. Chip-scale lasers promise to uniquely address the need for small, low-power, and potentially low-cost sources.


The combination of PIC hybrid integration technology and semiconductor packaging...

Michael Matter’s journey into sports technology began with a golf ball. More specifically, a photo of a golf ball that was captured at its precise moment of impact with a club head. The photo — shot by Harold “Doc” Edgerton, the legendary high-speed photography pioneer — showed in detail how the connection flattened the round, rigid surface of the ball.

As a boy, Matter was an enthusiast of both photography and electronics and aimed to replicate Edgerton’s stroboscopically achieved imaging feats. “I figured out how to modify a $20 electronic flash to get it from being about a 2-ms flash duration down to about 10 μs,” Matter said. In subsequent years, Matter worked with Edgerton at...

Many photonics systems and methods require projecting lasers over an area of interest so that the reflected light can be sensed and interpreted. Among the most prominent examples are in the realms of imaging and ranging. These include confocal microscopy, lidar, and optical coherence tomography.


Courtesy of istock.com/Dmytro Naumov.
Techniques such as these support a range of industrial and biomedical applications. For each, the use of laser scanners is imperative to achieve system functionality.

Depending on the application, different waveforms can be used with laser scanners. The selection of the proper waveform to drive the scanner is vital to achieving the widest scan angle and the best possible image quality.

...

Thermal image sensor technology developer Obsidian Sensors has received an undisclosed investment from Himax Technologies. Himax, located in Taiwan, is a supplier and fabless manufacturer of display drivers and other semiconductor products.

The companies will develop an advanced thermal vision solution combining Himax’s “WiseEye” AI processing capabilities with Obsidian’s thermal imaging technology. The solution, Himax said, aims to support detection in challenging environments and boost accuracy and reliability for applications, including industrial, automotive safety and autonomy, and security systems.

San Diego-based Obsidian manufacturers its sensors using a large area microelectromechanical systems...

IPG Photonics has named Mark Gitin CEO. Gitin, who currently heads the photonics solutions division at MKS Instruments, will succeed IPG co-founder Eugene Scherbakov, effective June 5.

Gitin joined MKS in 2017 as vice president and general manager of the photonics business unit, and in 2018 he assumed responsibility for the company's instruments and motion business. From 1995 to 2017, he held several executive roles at Coherent, including vice president of strategic marketing, vice president of business development, and vice president and general manager of the diodes, fibers, and systems business Unit.

Eugene Scherbakov served as CEO since 2021, succeeding company founder Valentin Gapontsev. Prior to taking over as CEO,...

Optatec, the international trade fair for optical technologies, components, and systems, returns to Messe Frankfurt May 14-16. Its 16th iteration, the event retains its focus on optoelectronics, machine vision, optics, laser components, fiber optics, and manufacturing.

The conference will feature talks from the foremost experts and engineers pushing innovation in optics, fabrication, optoelectronics, machine vision, sensing, and manufacturing. Visitors can hear lectures from market-leading companies such as Hamamatsu, OptoTech, QED Technologies, and Casix. Topics include manufacturing laser systems, lens production, polarizers, and supply chains.

Optatec will take place May 14-16 at Messe Frankfurt. The three-day show...

An International Space Station (ISS) National Laboratory-sponsored initiative will test a 3D mapping technology to produce detailed maps of remote environments. The project will use NASA's free-flying robotic Astrobee system on the ISS. Per the initiative, called the Multi-Resolution Scanner (MRS), the technology project brings together Boeing and CSIRO, an Australian government agency for scientific research.

The target device is designed to quickly create 3D maps of various environments with high levels of detail, such as the ISS or a lava tube on Mars. According to CSIRO research group leader Marc Elmouttie, the team is using the Astrobee robots to test MRS by creating 3D maps of the space station's Kibo module.

“The...

Taiwan Semiconductor Company (TSMC) has detailed three partnerships — one each with Ansys, Synopsys, and Cadence — to further develop its silicon photonics integration system capabilities. The collaborations serve to integrate various software platforms and capabilities into TSMC's platform.
TSMC’s COUPE offers a standardized method for connecting electronic and photonic circuits to optical fibers that meets the needs of a broad range of data communication applications. The COUPE information flow and thermal behavior can be simulated with a set of Ansys multiphysics products. Courtesy of Ansys. Ansys is collaborating with TSMC on multiphysics software for TSMC’s Compact Universal Photonic Engines (COUPE). The...

Featuring more than 2000 technical sessions across 29 topic categories, plus plenary sessions, special symposia, and short courses, the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO) 2024 kicks off at the Charlotte Convention Center in North Carolina, May 5-10. Topics to be covered range from breakthrough ideas to real-world applications in quantum photonics, laser-based manufacturing, and fiber optics.

The annual conference highlights the latest applications, market-ready technologies, and cutting-edge research in all areas of lasers and photonics with six days of technical sessions, tutorials, exhibits, special symposia, short courses, plenary sessions, and other special events.

The Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics,...

Collaborators on an E.U.-funded research project have developed a miniature hyperspectral optics-based air quality monitoring system. Called PASSEPARTOUT, the €6.9 million ($7.4 million) project uses laser technology to detect the smallest amount of toxic gases in large, densely populated regions.

The World Health Organization estimates that 4.2 million people die prematurely from the high levels of toxic gas molecules and particulate matter they breathe in the air outdoors or ambient air pollution. Currently, methods for assessing air quality in urban environments rely on units the size of refrigerators, which can cost up to €100,000 (~$107,000). Low-cost sensors relying on chemical reactions can suffer inaccuracies due to...

Rice University physicists have discovered a phase-changing quantum material — and a method for finding more of it — that could potentially be used to create flash like memory capable of storing qubits, even when a quantum computer is powered down.

Phase-changing materials have been used in commercially available nonvolatile digital memory. In rewritable DVDs, for example, a laser is used to heat minute bits of material that cools to form either crystals or amorphous clumps. Two phases of the material, which have very different optical properties, are used to store the ones and zeros of digital bits of information.

In a study published in Nature Communications, Rice physicist Ming Yi and more than three dozen...

Exail, a high-tech industrial group specializing in photonics technologies, has signed a contract with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to provide more than 60 dual-stage modulators to the equip the high-fidelity pulse shaping (HiFiPS) system at the National Ignition Facility (NIF)’s master oscillator room. This is the second optical component ordered from Exail to enhance NIF’s capabilities.

The NIF target bay at LLNL. Exail’s previously supplied optical fibers to the facility before it was contracted to supply NIF dual-stage modulators. Courtesy of Damien Jemison/LLNL, U.S. Energy Dept. The HiFiPS system’s role is to enable better power balance and symmetry control in implosions by increasing...

Menlo Systems’ U.S. subsidiary, Menlo Systems, Inc., has moved its headquarters from Newton, N.J. to Boulder, Colo. The new facility doubles the square footage of the previous location and will be partly under construction to build out laboratory and warehouse space providing the required infrastructure to support development, production, and expanded service capabilities. The official opening of the premises is planned for the second half of 2024.

The façade of Menlo Systems Inc.’s new headquarters in Boulder, Colo. Courtesy of Menlo Systems. GRENOBLE, France — Lynred, a provider of infrared detectors for the aerospace, defense, and commercial markets, was selected by the European Space Agency to develop a...

Argon-fluoride (ArF) excimer lasers — deep UV (DUV) lasers emitting light with a wavelength of 193 nm — are used in lithography to create precise patterns. However, the limited coherence of conventional ArF excimer lasers hinders their effectiveness in applications requiring high-resolution patterns, like interference lithography.

To generate highly coherent DUV for interference lithography and other applications, researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) developed a hybrid ArF excimer laser that delivers both narrow linewidth and high coherence at 193 nm. In the hybrid ArF excimer laser, the ArF oscillator has been replaced with a narrow linewidth, solid-state, 193 nm laser seed. The laser seed, which exhibits...

Since 2019, many have become accustomed to a swab up the nose to test for COVID-19, using either at-home rapid antigen tests or the more accurate, though longer-to-process PCR tests commonly provided by clinics. Bridging speed and accuracy, a diagnostic tool developed by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) and Brigham Young University (BYU) tests for COVID-19 and Zika virus in a matter of hours with the same or better accuracy as high-precision PCR tests.

The researcher's lab-on-a-chip diagnostics system combines optofluidics and nanopore technology. Stemming from their success in tests on animal models, the collaborating researchers believe that the technology could be an innovation for the future of rapid...

Imaging solutions company Teledyne e2v has signed a technology and design collaboration with 3D vision solution provider Airy3D. The agreement targets the development of commercial 3D vision solutions supporting applications in numerous market segments.

The first product to come out of the collaboration is the Topaz5D — a low power and passive 2 MP global shutter CMOS sensor that produces both 2D images and 3D depth maps. The collaborators have already released a Topaz5D evaluation kit, along with monochrome and color sensor samples.

Researchers from the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology (USST) introduced a one-step method to generate holograms in real time. This approach to creating computer-generated holograms (CGH) could provide a practical solution to create immersive 3D visualizations, opening a path to adopt holographic displays in diverse industries and applications.

The method uses a Split-Lohmann lens-based diffraction model based on a Fourier holography system between an RGB image and the hologram plane. The model enables rapid synthesis of 3D holograms through a single-step, backward propagation calculation.

The light-wave propagation from the RGB image to the hologram is modulated by a predesigned, depth-dependent, virtual...